Arlington, Berwick, Selmeston with Alciston and Wilmington Churches

Poetry Page

Poetry from the Benefice

In a California Church Their Necks are Faithful

By Margaret Wilmot

Soft as pollen, light touches his white hair,
her silky shawl; shoulders tilting with perky fortitude beneath
the small head's frizzy wedge, still fair.

Through the lattice-wall sun
stipples the rim of space around them in the pew,
glows; turns their necks green -

frames Man and Wife.
They grow, reach up, stalks holding calices where words
in an own chemistry commute to life.

A Feather

By Michele Boys

A feather floating in the air
Became an answer to a prayer.

Worried words awash with tears
Troubled thoughts amidst the fears
Deepest senses filled the soul
Incomplete no longer whole.

Silently it came to rest
A sign of peace from heaven blest
Trust the Lord it seemed to say
And He will take the hurt away.

Remember words from times gone by
You are the apple of my eye
You are so precious in my sight
Your darkness will be turned to light.

Within the silence all around
The feather floated to the ground
Gently raised with steady hand
It's message God does understand.

A feather floating in the air
Became the answer to a prayer.

In the Persistent Erasure

By Margaret Wilmot

In the persistent erasure
of small grammatical distinctions, the verbs
have turned bully.
Access, finalise

knock down thought before
there is time to wonder:
should I give access? make it final?
And now

the verbs are even turning on
each other; the in-fighting has begun.
Was has shunted were out of if’s fantasy-land,
blurring

boundaries between real
and not, while are -
in the contemporary language Anglican service - has shouldered aside

small be: our open, unopinionated
subjunctive, which still
suggested human doubt and hope, not to mention
the detail of free will.

In the persistent erasure
of small grammatical distinctions,
the verbs have recast God
in their own image.

Abbey

By Margaret Wilmot

My gaze swings
up to the glint on wings which dip through stone
tracery and wheel out the high void of nave
to pearly sky.

Light shines
unstained along grass corridors, the air
is bright; a smudged face smiles off a column-head
straight in my eyes.

When I
was young and radiantly unwise, I thought
one could conceive this world at will - take vows for
an afternoon,

enrol
shadows to till and politick and pray.
I'd pace out chapter-house, see walls, act out
my yearning for

a whole.
What innocence. What arrogance. Play God
by ignoring God. The monks knew, quite simply,
the full glory

of He
Who blessed sea-snail and crocus, Who made all hues
to glow, was not theirs to see; they were but threads
worked by His hand.

And yet
as from the vestibule beneath the tower we move
into a soaring dappled space - here is
a whole.

A warp
of light flexes and bends, and a bird wreathed in a scroll
of plants takes flight. Our faces lift, unfold
like flowers.

Meet me Jesus

By Stella Myerson

Far from land amid the ocean
Our boat sails swiftly on.
My watch at night has just began
Five hours to spend, just me alone.

Meet me Jesus on this night
I wait to greet You here!
The moon is up, the stars are bright
I know you will appear!

A privilege I have in life
To sail the Ocean seas.
Not for pleasure, not for gain,
But for God to please.

Meet me Jesus on this journey
Much time I have to pray.
I need to know You so much better
In each and every way.

The night is dark and waves I hear
They’re playing around our boat.
The swell builds up with whooshing sounds
Its crests foam white and float.

Meet me Jesus here, I ask
Stay with me all the way.
I can not manage on my own
To you I turn and pray.

The wind it whistles up above
Our rigging hums its tune.
The air is warm and comforts me
For fear, I leave no room.

Meet me Jesus once again
Just as You have before.
To this sinner once You came
My life You did restore

Season Of Grace

By Margaret Wilmot

Trinity now. The acacia petals whirl
and fall. Weddings,
I think, as we pass the white church path, trees
raining a benison of soft confetti,
grace in petals.

Look, Mother. We pause. She smiles and her eyes lift,
comb through with leaf.
She’s part of all she sees. Her dying cells
have left new space for life, always filling,
always sinking.

The soft confetti-drift within her brain
has set it free;
it feels as it moves, moves as it loves.
A marvel where growth tends and also how
it falls away

yet stays itself. Petals. My mother’s self.
I take her hand
as we make our slow way through a world where
there’s no doubt she belongs. She sees sparkle
everywhere, all

burdens of memory and defence, gone –
like summer dawns
when she was very young, drawn outside into
her mother’s garden, entranced to feel how one
plus one make one.

A warm breeze swirls the petals in a lifting.
It bathes us round.
Just like weddings, I say, real confetti.
Let’s wish them happy endings, like fairy tales.
I squeeze her hand.

And they lived happily ever after?
She laughs for pure
delight, suffers no ironies of doubt.
But in this leaf-light embrace it feels love
will never fail.

Shall we move on? I ask. See about those eggs?
The farm-box lies
just past the church, still a goal we can achieve.
I forgot a bag – do you think we’ll manage
to keep them whole?

Going back it’s all downhill past church and pond
and bluebell bank,
but Mother doesn’t raise her eyes, respond
to Look! She has withdrawn, fallen away,
her whole sap sunk,

and in her withdrawing the world unknits,
drifts loose, as if
our energies only hold it close. Yet
at the dapple of leaf-spill down her steps,
her eyes lift, fill.

The Morning Star - A Meditation

By Michele Boys

“Why are you weeping?”
Mary shivered. The cold air of the night wrapped itself around her like a shroud, and she could feel its icy chill penetrating her soul.
Not just the air but also the deep immeasurable cold of the unrelenting sadness that enveloped her heart.

Tears welled in her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks as she relived the horrifying events on the faraway hill. She had lost someone that she loved and respected. A love now broken like His body as it hung on the cross.
There had been so much hope, but that too had gone as His lifeblood ebbed away.
Her faith had been strong and so she came to visit Him for the last time to offer Him one last service of respect and love.

“Mary.”
Mary was startled. In the east the first colours of the dawn began to grace the morning sky. Pale and insignificant at first - as if the darkness was reluctant to release it's hold to the light of the day. She knew that voice but could not trust herself to believe what she had heard.

The light was brighter now as through golden yellows to deep pinks the sun began to rise.
“Mary.”
Mary's heart beat faster. She wiped away her tears and turned to see Jesus standing there. It was the Risen Lord. Her tears were now tears of joy and a feeling of excitement and well-being rose inside her. She knew that all her shattered dreams would be made whole again, and her face lit up with happiness.

The daylight was at its brightest now. The Morning Star had risen and its light was shining on the world.

Ordinary Things

By Margaret Wilmot

I glance up and there’s a brilliant light
just hanging there high in the sky’s emptiness. It’s the moon,
of course, but already there's been that catch
of wonder, the heart has skipped
before this miracle; again
illustrating the old sermon how the ordinary things
in Nature, would be greater miracles than the extraordinary,
which we admire most, if they were done but once.
Bird-song. How out of a tiny throat
music comes pouring. Long ago I gave up asking
which bird is this? Almost always it was a blackbird, or a thrush,
or the delicate English robin. Still
the moon exerts its pull though now light
is seeping into the sky, diluting the darkness into the bluest ink.

Now, The Miracle

By Margaret Wilmot

It is the intersection
of the evolution of
a hundred and fifty million years with
a single, specific moment in human time
which is the miracle:
that the bird’s delicate, sophisticated throat
may tremble and swell
and commence to pour forth
an utterly astonishing configuration of sound
now.

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Poetry Page